Recently I had the pleasure of doing an oil filter housing gasket on a 2005 BMW 525i.

Often times people replace the oil pan gaskets on these vehicles only to find themselves with the same leak a few months later. A well known problem on ALL the late model BMW Inline 6 engines is the oil filter housing gasket. I am not talking about the oil filter cap o-ring, rather the gasket / seal that goes between the actual housing and the engine block. What happens is this seal will become hard like a rock and start leaking oil in the valley which will then run down all sides of the engine covering the oil pan. On this paticular BMW we were replacing the suspension so while we had it down we also replaced the gasket for good measure. Important to realize that the oil pan gasket requires you to lower the entire front subframe in order to remove the gasket. It is a 12 hour job to replace the oil pan and or gasket, while only a 5 hour job to replace the oil filter housing seal. When doing both you can save the customer some money in overlapping labor, but since we were also replacing the struts and loweing down the sub-frame I was able to save the customer a considerable amount of money.

What most people will want to do when faced with what appears to be an oil pan leak is to start off with the oil filter housing gasket. The oil filter housing also has the alternator and power steering pump attached to it, so these items will need to be removed in order to remove the oil filter housing. The seal is less than $10 at the BMW dealership - Part # 11 - 42 - 1 - 719 - 885

Inline Six engine as found in late model 3 and 5 series BMW's

As you can see the oil pan area gets pretty messy.

Start by removing the air box, filter and such. You will also want to remove the upper radiator hose as this makes it much easier to get at things. Dont be a fool and try and flex it around as it has plastic connections and that's just asking for a broken hose, and that will no doubt piss you off and cost you money. Once all is removed you should be able to remove everything from the top.

As you can see the power steering pump also connects to the oil filter housing just under the alternator. Pull the alternator first then you have access to the power steering pump.

Here you get a good look at the area once the filter housing is removed. To the right you see the valey that this oil travels down. You cant really see in this area while everything is on the vehicle. The hosing is held on by 6 bolts.

Here you get a good look at the gasket. This gasket gets hard as a rock and fails to seal.

When you are done be sure to clean the area. In our case we had the pan down so we really got it nice and clean.